CJ Griffin Quoted in Article Regarding Town Paying Legal Fees After Denying Request for Public Records
CJ Griffin, director of the Justice Gary S. Stein Public Interest Center at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden P.C., was quoted in The Trentonian article, “Ewing Township agrees to pay $100K in Trentonian OPRA lawsuit fees.” The article discusses a two-year court battle where Ewing Township refused to release a redacted Use-of-Force Report that related to the use of force by Ewing police officers against a juvenile. Griffin appealed a lower court decision that denied access to the report and secured a victory in the Appellate Division, which issued a published opinion ruling that such reports were subject to public access so long as juvenile names are redacted. After Township’s unsuccessfully tried to take the case to the New Jersey Supreme Court, it ultimately released the Use-of-Force Report to The Trentonian and was ordered to pay the Trentonian’s legal fees.
It has always been the practice for agencies to redact a juvenile’s name from a UFR and release it,” CJ Griffin, the rising Pashman Stein attorney who filed the OPRA lawsuit on behalf of The Trentonian, said Friday in a statement, “so it was disappointing that Ewing fought so hard and tried to take this case all the way to the Supreme Court when redaction fully protected the juvenile’s identity and let the public learn about force used against a kid.”
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